Taking down the GameFront files

Back in April 2016 the owners of GameFront.com, Defy Media, announced that they would be shutting the site down within two weeks and that all the mods hosted on their site would no longer be available.

In order to save over 60,000 mods that would otherwise have been lost entirely, we spent hundreds of hours archiving every mod that we could from GameFront and eventually provided them for download here at Nexus Mods over the course of many months.

Thankfully, with outside help, the staff of GameFront were able to reclaim the domain name and created a new site to host all the mods that had been lost when GameFront went down. This new site launched in March 2018.

Members of their team were quick to get in contact with us and chat about our GameFront file archive. We offered straight away to remove all the files that had been archived, as GameFront was now back up, but they were happy for us to keep the files up as a secondary backup source for their files. In return, we agreed to link back to the original file on the new GameFront site as a sign of respect.

Unfortunately, we've now been informed by the GameFront staff that other sites have now tried to exploit this situation by claiming that if Nexus Mods can host the files, so can they. We think trying to compare uploading the files to other sites now that GameFront is actually back, to us archiving the files back when GameFront went down and looked likely to never come back is, frankly, disingenuous. However, I'm not surprised by what I've been told considering who is involved.

At the request of the GameFront staff and to help them with this situation, we have agreed to take down the files we archived back in 2016. These files will continue to be available on GameFront for the foreseeable future and a link to this message will be shown on any files we were originally hosting from the archiving process.

We hope this puts an end to the unfortunate situation that the GameFront staff have had to deal with recently and I want to personally thank them for their work over the years, and the respectful way in which they've communicated with us on these issues. I wish them all the best.

Well that sucks. I get where gamesfront is coming from but they couldve left them up on the nexus as a backup. Screw the other sites hosting anything since you had a legitimate reason for putting these on nexus. I would've never found mods for Stalker games if they weren't on nexus. I don't know other modding sites aside from GUN and i cant stand them; and now gamesfront i suppose.

@axonis I disagree. According to the above write-up, the people who run Gamefront had reached an agreement with the Nexus. Other sites who hosted the files had no such agreement. The Nexus was under no obligation to renegotiate, but did so out of courtesy to their peer.

With that said, this entire issue of redistribution rights for freeware is simply not well addressed in the current body of IP law. There is little real recourse in such a dispute, and I think the Nexus absolutely took the high road in this situation!

After a long time away, I was searching for mods for a game and had two separate search-engine results that link to this site for two separate mods, give me a "hidden file" page with an explanation to the effect of "Game Front is now back therefore we can't let you access the mod because ya know stepping on toes or some such. Are you not entertained?"

I just don't see it. It seems like unnecessary and excessive self-deprecation on the part of Nexus Mods which has been steadfast to the gaming community -- while others, not so much.

Maybe I missed something. Wouldn't be the first time. As I said, been away from this site for awhile. Sigh. Off to GameFront to search for those mods.

So what exactly is the big deal? tbh if they weren't archived they would have been gone forever you think the authors would have wanted that? Unless people had the mods already installed on the PC and they can back them up for others. It just seems to me GF is trying to get back on its feet by nixing some of newer competition. GF while was a great site died out multiple times can we be sure it wont happen again? IDK if it was a domain issue or what but other modding sites picked up the slack. No one knows where a lot of these modding authors went many did move on just let bygones be bygones.